As of December 19, 107 rapid responses had been posted on bmj.com in response to the editorial by Doyal and Doyal. A sampling of the original rapid responses (after editing) appears below. The complete debate appears at http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/323/7321/1079.—EDITOR

Doctors as killers

Sally Rynne(srynne@rcseng.ac.uk), administrator

Royal College of Surgeons

Cleveland, Queensland, Australia

Austin Repatriation Medical Centre, Melbourne 3084, Australia

United States

This article originally appeared in BMJ USA

Editor—Speaking as a non-medical person, I would not wish to be treated by any doctor who is willing to kill patients, even at that patient's request. It should never be a doctor's job to act as executioner for those who no longer wish to continue living or whose life is so “deficient” that it is not considered worth living. All of us will eventually die, some with “dignity,” some without, and we have very little choice about this. I cannot imagine anything more undignified than …